Thursday, December 5, 2013

Drone has delivered the sugar, Dear!

Imagine
that you have invited few of your friends along with their spouses
for a little get together in the evening. At 5 PM your wife suddenly
tells you that she has run out of sugar or something else. This means
that you need to get dressed up, take the car out of the garage and
head for the nearest super market for a Kilogram of Sugar. Pick up
sugar, stand in the line next to a cashier and finally return home
after spending at least an hour, depending how far away you stay from
the super market. While going through this unavoidable exercise, I am
sure that many of us might daydream or imagine, how great would it be
to have an angel appear in the sky above and deliver that Kilogram of
sugar to us, while we are leisurely standing in our yard or on the
house terrace, sipping beer from a can.

Rest
assured that your imaginary daydream has just now come into the realm
of possibility, but with a small correction, if Jeff Bezos, founder
of Amazon Corp. in USA , has his way. He wants to use drones instead
of Angels from our daydreams.

Drones
have now become a dread or particularly ill famous, for the terror
minded individuals from certain countries like Pakistan, Yemen and
Somalia, because they appear suddenly in the sky and unleash deadly
Hellfire missile attacks , bringing about complete destruction. For
the Americans, it is a wonderful way off totally destroying their
enemy with no possibility of any loss on their side. This fact was
empatheticaly proved last month when a drone killed the Pakistani
Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, who was sitting in his SUV parked
opposite his own residential compound gate.

American
news channel CBS recently broadcast a prime time interview of Amazon
founder Jeff Bezos, who recently acquired the newspaper 'Washington
Post' for a song. During this interview Mr. Bezos came up with an
unexpected announcement that his company was working on getting
products to customers in 30 minutes or less using unmanned aerial
vehicles (UAVs).

Wow!
If Mr. Bezos's dream comes true, how would the scenario, I described
above change? Suppose again, that your wife tells you about running
out of sugar at 5 PM, just few hours before the party. All you need
to do is to punch your order to Amazon on your smart phone, go to
yard with that can of beer and relax. Within 30 minutes, a drone
holding a yellow coloured plastic box underneath, would appear in the
sky and straight way head for you. It would land on your lawn or the
terrace as the case may be. It would just release the yellow plastic
box on the floor and buzz off to complete the next order. You just
pick up the box and give it to your wife. Bingo! As simple as that.
All you need to do is to give a shout to your wire: “Drone has
delivered the sugar, Dear!”

Mr.
Bezos, who prefers to call his drones as “Octocopters” says that
they would pick up customers’ boxed orders from a “fulfilment
centre” of Amazon and then use GPS coordinates to carry it to the
customer’s address and drop it in the front yard of the house. No
doubt that this “Prime Air” drone project is still in the
research and development phase and it may take years to advance the
needed technology and needed federal Aviation Administration rules
and regulations to be created. The present Octocopters the company is
working on currently, are capable of carrying packages weighing up to
10 kg, and according to Mr. Bezos, this accounts for about 86 per
cent of the items Amazon delivers. The company is testing Octocopters
with a range of about 10 miles and they could cover a significant
portion of the population in urban areas in USA.

Though
Mr. Bezos's idea is quite revolutionary and sounds like wonderful
music to the ears of the consumer, there appear to be many a
logistical and legal difficulties before any such concept comes in
practice. How the drone would find a package’s intended recipient
after flying to a particular GPS address, How the transfer of the
package would be effected? Or How theft or other disruptions,
including the possibility that the drone may be shot down, would be
avoided.

Use of
drones of such large-scale commercial purposes is currently not
possible under U.S. Law. The regulator in this field, the Federal
Aviation Administration is working for a solution according to some
reports. If these rules materialise, commercial drones might become
legally viable and workable.

Amazon's
new concept may or may not materialise, but it's stock rose by 1%
last week in pre-market trading after thanksgiving weekend.